Ans: A

Exp:

Recently, the  Election Commission of India (ECI), under Sections 58(2) and 58A(2) of the Representation of People Act 1951 (RPA), declared void the poll in the polling stations of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

Statement 1 is incorrect: As per Section 52 of RPA (amended in 1996), the poll shall be adjourned only in case of the death of a recognised political party’s candidate.

• The above provision applies if the candidate with a valid nomination dies at any time after 11.00 a.m. on the last date for making nominations, until the commencement of the poll.
• The  recognized political party must make the nomination within seven days.

Statement 2 is incorrect: Under Section 58 of the RPA (‘Fresh poll in the case of destruction, etc., of ballot boxes’), the Election Commission (EC) can declare the poll at a polling station to be void if:

• An unauthorised person has unlawfully taken away any EVM;
• Any EVM has been accidentally or intentionally destroyed, or lost, or damaged, or tampered with; or
• A mechanical failure develops in any EVM during the recording of votes.

Statement 3 is correct: The Presiding Officer of a polling station can adjourn the poll at a polling station under section 57(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1951, in case of:

• A natural calamity like a flood, a severe storm;
• Non-receipt or loss or damage to essential polling materials like EVM, electoral roll etc;
• Interruption or obstruction due to any riot or, open violence;
• Non-arrival of the polling party due to obstruction or any other serious difficulty; or
• Non-commencement of the poll within two hours from the scheduled time due to malfunctioning of EVM, or any other reason.

Ans: D

Exp:

Recently, the United State’s USTR Special 301 Report has again included India in the ‘Priority Watch List’ (PWL) of countries, along with China, Russia, Venezuela.

Statement 1 is incorrect: The “Special 301″ Report is an annual review of the global state of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and enforcement.

•  Mandated by Section 182 of the US Trade Act of 1974, it is an annual review conducted to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of US trading partners‘ IP protection and enforcement practices.

Statement 2 is incorrect: Argentina, Chile, China, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela have been placed on the 2024 Special 301 Report on the adequacy and effectiveness of US trading partners’ protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights. 

• The USTR Special report states that the Dominican Republic and Uzbekistan have been removed from the Watch List due to significant progress in addressing IP enforcement concerns.

Statement 3 is incorrect: India remains “one of the world’s most challenging” major economies with respect to the protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) as it placed the country on the Priority Watch List on its 2024 Special 301 Report.

Ans: D

Exp:

In a world of hyper-connectivity, network as a service (NaaS) promises to deliver a better day-to-day user experience.

• NaaS is a cloud service model in which customers rent networking services from a cloud vendor instead of setting up their own network infrastructure.
• NaaS allows customers to operate their own network without maintaining their own networking infrastructure.

Option D is correct: 

• NaaS can replace: 
  • Virtual private networks (VPNs) 
  • Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) connections 
  • Other legacy network configurations. 
  • It can also replace on-premise networking hardware such as firewall appliances and load balancers.

Ans: B

Exp:

Recently, the Indian Air Force’s MI 17 V5 helicopter was deployed  to extinguish the raging forest fires in Nainital district, Uttarakhand.

Option B is incorrect: Bambi Bucket is also known as helicopter bucket is a specialised aerial firefighting tool which has been in use since the 1980s.

• It is suspended by cable under a chopper, and which can be filled by lowering into a river or pond before being flown above a fire and discharged aerially by opening a valve at the bottom of the bucket. 
• It is essentially a lightweight collapsible container that releases water from underneath a helicopter to targeted areas.
• It is especially helpful in fighting wildfires that are difficult or impossible to reach from the ground.
• At Fukushima after the catastrophic tsunami in 2011 Bambi Buckets were used by the Japanese military to douse water on the country’s dangerously overheated nuclear reactors until ground access could be gained.
• Bambi bucket discharges a solid column of water, resulting in a more accurate and effective water dump, less evaporation on the descent, and greater impact force.

Ans: A

Exp:

Recently, Geologists at MIT and Oxford University have found ancient rocks in Greenland that bear the oldest remnants of Earth’s early magnetic field. 

About Earth’s Magnetic Field:

• The Earth’s magnetic field is predominantly a geo-axial dipole, with north and south magnetic poles located near the geographic poles.
• Earth’s magnetic field is known to have wandered and flipped in the geologic past. This wandering has generally been quite slow, around 9 km a year, allowing scientists to easily keep track of its position. But since the turn of the century, this speed has increased to 50 km a year.

Statement 1 is correct: The Magnetic field is due to electrical currents produced by convective motion of metallic fluids (consisting mostly of molten iron and nickel) in the outer core of the earth. 

• This is known as the dynamo effect.

Statement 2 is  incorrect: The magnetic poles inside the earth changes position with time.

•  In a span of 240 years from 1580 to 1820 AD, over which records are available, the magnetic declination at London has been found to change by 3.5°. 
• On the scale of a million years, the earth’s magnetic field has been found to reverse its direction.